Routemaster buses at a bus rally in Finsbury Park, London in 2004. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

When it entered full service in 1959, the Routemaster was slated to be in operation for no more than seventeen years; it survived for almost half a century.

The brief given to designers was to offer London a vehicle that was bigger, lighter and more comfortable than the fleet of electric trolleybuses it was replacing. What London got was a double decker bus that went on to became a style icon the world over - an attribute that kept it from being scrapped until 2005 and has helped bring it back to the capital's streets once more.

But the public's enduring love affair with Routemaster's pleasing aesthetics might not have been predicted by the Guardian's London correspondent, who, in 1956, went to see what all the fuss was about.